What Are Federal Elections?

Popular Vote

• The president and vice president are elected through a system called the Electoral College. This set of procedures allows both the people and the Congress to have a say in electing the president and the vice president. Generally, the political parties nominate the electors and the citizens appoint them in the general elections, but laws vary from state to state. Their number must be equal to that of the state's delegation in the House of Representatives and the Senate. There are generally 538, but this number may change with the decennial census.
  
  

Electors' Vote

• On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, the electors gather in their state's capital. After they vote, they count the votes and prepare the result lists. These lists are centralized and counted by the Congress members in a special session. The candidate that ends up with a majority of 270 votes wins the presidential elections. If none of the candidates gets the majority, the House of Representatives votes to decide the winner among the candidates with the most votes. Similarly, the vice president is elected by the Senate.
  
  

The Winner

• The candidate elected by popular vote is not always the designated president. Sometimes electors choose the president irrespective of the popular vote. That was the case in the elections in 2000, when the last state to count the votes, Florida, gave George W. Bush 25 electoral votes. Thus, after recounting, Bush was declared winner, even though he had fewer popular votes than his opponent Al Gore.
  
  

Congress Elections

• The members of the House of Representatives are mandated for two years. They are elected only by the voters within the district that the candidate will represent. The senators serve six-year terms, but there are never elections for all of them. One-third of them, in turns, have to be elected every two years, so the senatorial body always combines new members with more experienced ones. Unlike representatives, senators may be elected by all voters in the state. The person with the most votes wins, even though the percentage may not represent the majority.